Ten Republican presidential candidates met in Cleveland for a primetime debate on Fox News.

Quote: Nareed

Grant? Eisenhower? How quickly they forget...

Yes, we had two presidents elected with high military rank (three if you count Washington), and. only two other Presidents elected without electoral experience.
Herbert Hoover
-- 3rd United States Secretary of Commerce
William Howard Taft
-- 42nd United States Secretary of War
-- 1st Provisional Governor of Cuba
-- Governor-General of the Philippines

Quote: Pacomartin

Yes, we had two presidents elected with high military rank (three if you count Washington), and. only two other Presidents elected without electoral experience.

Oh, more than that. If no one else, there was Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt.

I meant non-career politicians. Roosevelt and Jackson were politicians. Washington was involved in politics, too. But then most people in his situation were. Politics used to be more of a participatory than a spectator sport back then, at least for land-owners.

No doubt Grant and Eisenhower learned a great deal about politics in their respective commands (like how to keep Patton down, as far as that was possible). But they were not primarily politicians.

I don't know how to classify Colin Powell. He stepped into notoriety, if not fame, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, which is as much a political as a military post.